02 December 2012 10:25 PM

George Osborne's autumn statement this week is unlikely
to be a crowd-pleaser. In the interests of that elusive notion called fairness,
the Chancellor is planning to clobber both the rich and the poor. It's a safe
bet that he will wind up pleasing no one.

We have a split-the-difference government. Terrified of
appearing harsh or uncaring, it insists that the misery must be spread around
evenly, on the principle that "we are all in this together".

So a benefits squeeze on the poor must be balanced by a
tax raid on the rich.

According to the latest speculation, Osborne would like
to save £4 billion from public spending over the next two years by freezing
welfare payments (though not the state pension).

But because the Liberals regard this as too tough, the
unemployed are to get an extra 1 per cent a year until the election in 2015.

Meanwhile, the wealthy face a cut in their pension tax
relief or higher stamp duty on sales of multi-million pound properties.

Osborne calculates that a compromise of this sort can be
sold to the public as an equitable division of the pain.

But the truth is that constantly trying to be all things
to all men is neither economically nor politically wise.

The economics are pretty clear. Despite all the talk of
welfare cuts, total spending on state benefits is now a staggering 8 per cent
higher than a year ago.

To listen to the likes of the BBC and The Guardian, you
would have thought that the heartless Tories were tipping widows and orphans
onto the streets.

But the reality is that with the welfare budget topping
£200 billion a year, they are doing nothing of the kind. Even the supposedly
cruel welfare cap is being pitched at a before tax income of over £30,000 a
year, regarded as a fortune in the north of the country.

Out of work benefits went up 5.2 per cent this year - a
huge increase when many private sector workers have faced pay cuts and when
many others have suffered pay freezes or only measly increases.

Meanwhile, with growth flatlining this year and expected
to recover only marginally next year to a sickly 1 per cent, the public
finances are in a terrible state.

Unless he resorts to some financial jiggery pokery, the
Chancellor is on course to overshoot his deficit target by £10 billion this
year. As for the national debt, that now stands at around 70 per cent of
national output and rising and Osborne has virtually no chance of fulfilling
his pledge to get it on a downward path by the election.

The Government should have frozen benefits alongside public
sector wages when it first took office in 2010. That way it would have sent the
clearest of signals that it was serious about getting spending under control
from the outset.

Instead it dithered - and indulged in other measures
intended to be crowd-pleasers. So the overseas aid budget, now gobbling up £8
billion a year, was made a sacred cow. Spending on big ticket items such as the
NHS and schools was also protected, amplifying the confused messages coming
from Whitehall about the scale of the economic challenge facing the country.

No wonder the deficit and debt reduction programmes are
so badly off course.

But the politics of this strategy are no more impressive.

In his party conference speech, David Cameron talked
about building an "aspiration nation" driven by individual ambition,
the so-called "doers and fixers" among the workforce who want to get
on in life and give their children a better tomorrow.

And he struck a positively apocalyptic note, by warning
(rightly) that Britain was engaged in a global race for survival among the
first rank of nations.

But this rhetoric is left looking pretty hollow against
the background of debt and deficits wildly overshooting their targets.

Nor is there any sign that left-of-centre voters, the 53
per cent of people who backed Labour or the Liberal Democrats at the last
election, have rallied to the Tory flag, impressed by the "fairness"
displayed by Dave and George.

All that has happened is that roughly half the Lib Dem
supporters have switched to Labour while a sizeable chunk of the core Tory vote
has either gone on strike or defected to the Conservative Party in exile, aka
UKIP.

Last week's by-elections, all in safe Labour areas, where
the Tories were hammered, were ample evidence that this mushy Conservatism is
cutting no ice with the centre-Left vote.

The Autumn Statement looks like more of the same. Welfare
will be squeezed, but not by anything like enough. The doers and fixers who
Cameron lauded in Birmingham will be left aggrieved, although it looks like
they will get a freeze in fuel duty, possibly lasting until the election.

As for the rich, whose pensions or property will come
under fire, they will moan for a while before calling in the tax lawyers to
find a convenient loophole or a way to move some of their wealth and business
offshore - thereby impoverishing the nation still further.

As the Bible puts it: "If the trumpet giveth an
uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"

Splitting the difference risks pleasing nobody. The Polly
Toynbees of this world are never going to vote Conservative and nor will they ever
have a good word to say about them.

As for the wealth creators and those who aspire to
getting on in life, they will wonder why they bother.

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He's already given the rich tax cuts of £40,000, so if they have tax hikes now it won't be an increase at all, just a pay back for what they've already had. However, those of us who pay as we earn, will of course pay more with nothing back. We are not in it together at all, its one law for the rich and one for the poor, the very poor suffering the most. We could save money if we stopped giving our money away, to foreign countries, H2 is another thing we should cancel. Why pay 33 billion for one route which most will not be able to afford to use. Child benefit for foreigners is another cut that could take place, they should claim in their own country. Another cut could come from our excit from the EU, 55 million per day. There are lots of ways to raise cash, and you don't have to be an accountant to see where. However its the nation lacking sensible MPs that is the problem, we have most of them living in a London bubble not knowing what and how the rest live. When will MPs begin to do things this nation is demanding instead of following party dogma?

The solution is so utterly simple that it is overlooked. Just slash the size of overweening government. Cut down the size of the bloated, interfering State and virtually all other economic problems will cure themselves faster than imaginable. But taxes are needed to pay for government , both national and local, and these non-productive, enterprise sapping bureaucrats hang on, like limpets ,to the free ride they take at producers' expense and continue to drag down our once "sceptres isle." They do not possess a shred of morality and take others hard earned income without a trace of guilt or remorse.

I would like to see George Osbourne, Nationalise Utilities, Railways and Coal and get people back to into work creating real jobs. Reduced VAT to 15% cut taxes for those earning under £50,000 increase taxes for the rich by at least 3%. Re-introduce Import Taxes to stop the country being flooded with foreign rubbish. Get rid of Wind Turbines and Green taxes. Freeze benefit pay. Stop all Foreign Aid. Stop paying welfare to those that come here from the EU/non EU who don't have a job, in fact if they don't have a job or a place to live they should be sent home on the first available pracitcal transport. Stop the waste in the NHS and reduce Westminter Civil Servants, as well as scrapping those government credit cards. Call me Dave should get rid of all those Quango he promised especially those that are still run by Labourites. Bankers bonus and the billions we give in Foreign Aid should be put in a Pension Pot for the Elderly, Education and Infrastructure. Reduce local council budgets by the cost of wasting taxpayer money publishing all forms, leaflets and signs in several lanquages as well as paying for Interpreters. Millions are spent in the NHS and the Policeforce on Interpreters, migrants should be able to speak and read good English. And, call me Dave should do what he promised, reform the Human Right Law and give us an In/Out referendum and, dump the LIb Dems asap.

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